HISD loses four more principals to KIPP

Pamela Farinas, the principal of Houston ISD’s Foerster Elementary, was honored Wednesday night as Principal of the Year for the district’s west region. It turns out that was her final hurrah in the state’s largest school district. Farinas is headed to the popular KIPP charter school chain. She will be a deputy head of schools and school leader (KIPP lingo for principal) at LIPP Liberation College Prep).

KIPP-co-founder Mike Feinberg, who began his career as a Teach for America teacher in HISD, also confirmed today that he has snagged a few other leaders from the school district:

-Daphane Carter, the principal of Bonham Elementary, is leaving to be a deputy head of schools and school leader at KIPP Spirit College Prep.

-Bill Sorrells, the principal of Thomas Middle School, is the new school leader at KIPP Polaris Academy for Boys.

-Eric Coleman, the principal of Westbury High School, will be a deputy head of schools at KIPP.

-As we’ve already reported, Paul Castro, the Westside High School principal who moved to Lee High School for a few months, will be a head of schools at KIPP.

It looks like the KIPP expansion, the 10-year plan to grow fivefold to 42 schools in Houston, is hitting HISD hard, at least in the leadership ranks. You’ll remember that HISD Superintendent Terry Grier tried to poach a KIPP leader, Terence Johnson, as his chief officer over middle schools, but Johnson decided to stick with the charter school.

Feinberg says KIPP management is working on training their assistant principals, deans, grade level chairs and other “emerging leaders” to become principals down the road. “In that way,” Feinberg says, “in the future we won’t need to recruit leaders from the outside as we will self-sufficiently grow our own.”

Grier, in his State of the Schools speech in February, said he welcomed the competition from charters such as KIPP and YES Prep.

“We’re not afraid of your competition,” Grier said. “We look forward to our continued partnership. But please rest assured that we will not sit idly by and watch our parents leave failing schools to go to charters … who are getting the kinds of results that our children deserve and that we are not producing.”

One of Grier’s first criticisms of HISD when he arrived last fall was that the district rarely recruited new principals from the outside. Now is his chance.

18 Responses

Public school systems are notorious for shifting all blame for extremely bad behavior from parents and students to the teachers. I don’t think anybody in their right mind should subject themselves to the abuse teachers endure in the public school system. Kids in public school systems can look a teacher in the face and say FU!! If a teacher approaches the public school board over issues like this they are ridiculed and told, “It’s YOUR fault for not controlling these kids”. Responsible parents AND TEACHERS are fed up and are looking for alternatives. Who can blame them?

JWW is absolutely right. I am teaching summer school, and one student flat out said…”The principal can’t do s*** to me. F** that n****”

Sorry if the direct quotation offends anyone, but the point is that when a teacher says a child can curse and not face consequences, we aren’t talking about words like da** and h***. Parents at KIPP are required to sign a contract in order for their student to enroll so of course the kid is going to do better, just like kids are going to learn when they go to a place like Sylvan because mom and dad are paying for it. Public schools don’t have expectations for parents so many parents don’t care.

This is an interesting social phenomenon to observe. It is not unlike the result of desegregation when the best and brightest abandoned the ghettos to move into better neighborhoods. Not only did the doctors and lawyers leave; but they took their relatively high achieving students with them. This resulted in a further depletion of civic resources and cultural enrichment for those that stayed behind. We must “grow” the pool from which we recruit quality leaders.

The name of the game is accountability. If teachers are not held accountable for their roles and responsibilities, if parents are not held accountable for involvement in their children’s education (being parents) and if students are not held accountable for their performance, you end up with a foolish complacency that has infected many underperforming public schools across this country. KIPP and other charter schools are addressing this issue on all of these fronts and the success of doing so speaks for itself.

Wow, Good ridance to Coleman and Farinas! The teachers who worked for them are cheering! Farnias principal of the year? Who voted that- her buds in the West Region office? The only thing she excells in is tooting her own horn. I expect her to not last long, but hope she does not come back to HISD!

Erica = why don’t you look into the fact that for all the jobs that are posted on the web for principal there are just as many that are not posted and are being filled without any sort of interview process or input from the community. There are good people losing their jobs out there or being displaced to other schools. Who is accountable for that? Where is the transparency in communication?

These principals may come back, but they will do so only after Dr. Grier leaves. Because they are going to schools were the riff raff can be removed, they may stay and never come back. Meanwhile, Grier is getting exactly what he wanted-hiring people outside of the state of Texas. He has already proven that he doesn’t think that Texas produces good teachers by recruiting in Florida and California. Since he has never been anywhere for longer than 2 years, we only have a few more months to go.

I agree with “fire grier now” and have heard much of the same. People from his previous districts are being flown in (on Houston tax dollars?) and given tours of various principal-less schools and asked which school they would like. What happened to the Principal Pipeline? Is that just for show? I have also heard that Grier made comments about how he can’t seem to get anyone from outside of Houston to take a school in HISD. Is it the district they are avoiding? Look in a mirror buddy.

KIPP and YES function as “Gatekeeper” schools. Teachers and the admin set up a gate; kids are responsible for getting through the gate. They, the charter schools, can function like this because if kids do not succeed, they can be sent back to the public school. Now not too many kids get sent back to the public schools because KIPP and YES ONLY accept kids whose parents sign a contract for behavior and academic work. Imagine if the public school ONLY had to take kids it could educate? Imagine if we, the public schools, had a lottery and only accepted kids who would sign various academic and behavior contracts? Would HISD be a prestigious school district? HAHAHAHA. Of course we would. HISD is in a losing position because we have to educate all the kids that KIPP and YES won’t take, all the kids KIPP and YES can’t educate. So all that’s left are the kids whose parents won’t enforce a high quality academic and behavior regimen at home, and by law get a free education in HISD. How fair is it to judge HISD against basically private schools like KIPP and YES? How dare KIPP and YES take taxpayer money and claim they are “better” than the public schools! They are better because they don’t have to take all the kids that public schools are forced to take!

They are not necessarily going to KIPP because of some grand plan (since when do “company” plans really benefit the people down at the bottom? And how do they benefit KIDS? Do they at all?), what they are doing is ESCAPING FROM HISD! Grier is running the ship into the ground… it’s a matter of MONTHS, not years, before he completely destroys the district. Morale has bottomed out completely. People are literally crying with heartache and some have fled after 20+ years in the district. Some fired, some resigned, some only staying long enough to earn retirement. I’ve never seen any organization treat professionals with such disrespect as the Dr. Terry Grier regime. It’s time to show HISD leadership what you think of their method of implementing change. SHOW IT WITH YOUR FEET! HUNDREDS of HISD administrators and teachers are doing just that, right now, this minute. It’s still not too late to resign your teaching contract without penalty and other districts are hiring. MOVE ON. NOW, NOT NEXT YEAR, NOW.